


Orders of Magnitude

by SemperIntrepida



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23166769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SemperIntrepida/pseuds/SemperIntrepida
Summary: In which Elisabet Sobeck considers the human cost of Project Zero Dawn.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	Orders of Magnitude

**Author's Note:**

> This drabble is the result of a prompt by imagine0314. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to visit a fandom outside my usual haunt!
    
    
    Daily Briefing, Project Zero Dawn Candidate Intake
    November 10, 2064
    
    Candidates Processed: 98 (35.0% of max capacity)
    
    Candidate Outcomes:
    * Participation: 68 (69.3%)
    * Confinement: 19 (19.3%)
    * Euthanasia: 11 (11.2%)
    
    Our efficiency at processing candidates continues to struggle. We have identified a bottleneck that occurs after the delivery of Presentation 1, and will be initiating a new protocol to usher candidates into separate debriefing rooms immediately after the conclusion of the holovid. We will continue to aggressively pursue ways to improve our intake velocity in order to reach our target goals.
    
    The number of candidates who are choosing not to participate in the project remains higher than our initial projections...
    

She tossed the datapad onto her desk and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms, hoping it'd make the words and numbers seared into her vision fade faster. _Choosing not to participate._ Such a sterile way of saying _decided to die instead of taking part in Elisabet Sobeck's murderous plan._

And it _was_ a murderous plan. Amazing how fast the wheels of bureaucracy can spin when the military realizes that this isn't a drill, that this was the apocalypse, now. She didn't know the details, but three days after her presentation to General Herres and the Joint Chiefs, she'd been given a facility to work in, and two days after that, they were processing the first candidates.

 _Processing._ Shit. She was already starting to think in the abstract, already distancing herself from what she'd done. Was doing. Would do.

She was telling people the bad news. And if they handled it well, she'd tell them the good news — that there was hope, not in this lifetime, but later on. And then she'd give them a choice: join her project, or die.

Join or die. Rinse and repeat. Over and over, the same choice for what would soon be thousands of candidates, each of them the best humanity had to offer. The masters of their fields, the cream of the crop. She'd brought them here on a one way trip, some kidnapped right off the street by black ops soldiers.

Whatever Elisabet Sobeck wanted, the world's governments would provide. All so she could build Zero Dawn, the most audacious machine the Earth would ever know. But before she could do _that_ , she'd built a smaller machine, a human conveyor line leading thirty percent of the world's best scientists, engineers, mechanics, and coders right to the charnel house. _Ten percent is a very optimistic projection. We're hoping for twenty, but the number could be higher..._

And this, _this_ , was just the beginning, a nanosecond in the runtime. Even with the best of the best working for her, it would take months to bring Zero Dawn online, while the swarm grew exponentially every day.

It was Herres who'd come up with the plan to handle that. Operation: Enduring Victory would buy her that time, at the mere cost of ten billion human lives and every other living being on Earth.

She had to look at that casualty number as a power of ten, an order of magnitude. Fermi would have called it a small number, right? Ten. Just ten. She wondered what Fermi himself would have done if he were sitting in her place, but history already told her: he'd gone ahead and assembled his team, and built a bomb more powerful than any other. He probably thought he was doing the right thing.

And anyway, _his_ number had been minuscule — just a five. A blip on the cosmic scale.

A throbbing pain flared up at her temples. Another headache. She'd never been prone to them before, but then again, she'd never murdered anyone before either. She placed her hands palm-down on her desk to stop the trembling she could feel coming and closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling recycled air. No matter what the HVAC engineers tried, they'd never been able to get rid of that stale undercurrent in the air. She'd have to get used to it; she'd likely never breathe the air outside again.

Her mind dredged up a memory: her mom's voice, saying, _Elisabet, put your big girl panties on and get to work._ She had a job to do. Time to do it. She pulled up the schematic for GAIA, looked over the spiderweb of connections between the subfunctions, ARTEMIS, DEMETER, HADES... So many connections reaching out, linked to all those lives that would pay for them in blood, just a power of ten.

When Pandora opened the box, the only thing left at the bottom was hope.


End file.
